Lester,

> > On the other hand, almost every IBO user agrees that, at some point, you
> > just have to make the switch to native IBO to fully exploit the product.
> > *That* is a learning curve; perfect BDE emulation in the
> > TDataSet-compatible components doesn't change it much, and preteding
> > there's no harder learning curve in IBO because of the TDataSet
> > emulation components won't help either. ;-)
>
> Yes and No.
>
> I have a number of modules that are simply 'BDE lookalikes' and I am not going
> to change their interface because it works, and with IBO it now actually runs
> 24/7.

I'm not going to rewrite old working applications either. ;-)
But you will have to develop new things, someday, and I bet you will do
it with native IBO unless you are forced to do otherwise (you could want
to use a TClientDataSet or a TdxQuantumGrid, for example).
So your answer is actually Yes. :-)

> The learning curve is made more difficult trying to drop native IBO into an
> established BDE prroject and I would recomend people start from scratch and
> build a clean application in order to understand native properly.

I second that.

> Its 'mindset' rather than 'learning curve' that is the problem.

Yes, I actually meant that. I am starting to talk about IBo in some
Delphi C/S courses and I can tell that it's the most difficult part for
learners ("What? No persistent fields?"; "What should I put into those
stringlists?").

> Since the end of last year the results have been stable, fast product and
> customers are not now saying "Well if Interbase is so unstable what will it
> cost to switch to something else!". For me IBO's only shortcoming is that I did
> not start usinging it sooner. I could probably achieve the same with IBX as it
> is now, but I have even paid Borland for help in the past without getting
> anything, so while I may be forced to stick with Builder, I would not risk a
> switch back to their flaky database access tools.

Some people say that nothing based upon TDataSet can ever reach the
efficiency of native IBO; I haven't got situations that are so critical
to testify it, but it sounds somewhat reasonable.

> This has also to be seen in the light that I was only back on BDE as it was the
> only way to access Interbase. I had previously dropped BDE in favour of
> Codebase using dBase files back in 1992, with the same sort of results. BDE has
> never worked for production environments!

For me it mostly has. Apps that are not much data intensive don't need
the best connectivity, I suppose. I'm just tired of complications and
don't want to have to install and configure it no longer! Besides the
BDE is dead so let's leave it to rest in peace.
Thanks for the comments.
Ciao
--
____
_/\/ando